Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

by Susan Meissner

  “Ah, Violet. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “So nice to meet you, Vince.” Violet shook his hand, an unmistakable “so this is Vince” look in her eyes.

  Vince took a seat on the sofa and proceeded to pour Cointreau into a shaker on the coffee table.

  “Sit with us!” Audrey said gaily, pulling Violet down on the couch with her. “Take the other armchair, Bert, darling.”

  Bert hesitated a second. “It’s getting late. I should probably go.”

  Audrey frowned at him. “Since when is midnight late? Don’t be a stick in the mud, Bert. Not you.”

  She didn’t wait for him to respond, but leaned forward and took a paring knife from the coffee table next to a trio of limes. She grabbed one of the limes, cut it in two, and handed one of the halves to Vince. He squeezed the fruit into the shaker and liquid squirted out. A tiny jet of lime juice hit Audrey’s neck and she squealed in mock alarm. It had felt like a kiss. Bert sat slowly down with an unreadable expression on his face.

  Vince put the cover on the shaker and began to shake it.

  “Oh!” Audrey exclaimed. “We need two more glasses. I’ll get them.”

  “I don’t need one.” Bert started to rise. But Audrey, already on her feet, pushed him back onto the chair.

  “Yes, you do. We are celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what?” Bert said.

  “It’s her b—,” Violet began, but Audrey cut her off.

  “The end of an era!” Audrey said dramatically as she headed to the kitchen. She returned a moment later with two more tumblers.

  She plopped back down next to Violet and set the glasses on the coffee table.

  “Wonderful. Here we are,” Vince said as he poured.

  Audrey extended a tumbler toward Bert. He stared at her for a moment before he took it. It was almost as if he was wondering what he had ever seen in her. What, indeed? Audrey raised her own tumbler high and so did Vince.

  “Cheers!” she said.

  Bert held his glass but did not drink. “What exactly are we toasting?”

  “I told you. The end of an era.”

  “And what era would that be?”

  Audrey stared at Bert, a smile plastered to her face, and didn’t reply. She had never seen him so distant from her. So detached. He used to look at her with different eyes.

  “Come on, then, Bert,” Vince said encouragingly. “Drink up.”

  Bert ignored him. “What era would that be, Audrey?” he said again, this time with more determination.

  Her eyes were suddenly burning with ready tears. “The end of my captivity,” she finally answered, still smiling. She brought the drink to her lips and tipped it back, draining the glass.

  “You lost your job today,” Bert said, in a kinder, gentler tone.

  Audrey wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I haven’t lost anything.”

  Bert leaned forward in his chair, as if he and she were alone in the room and he was speaking only to her. “Your supervisor let you go, Audrey.” His tone now brimmed with disappointment and concern. Maybe even sorrow.

  “I let her go,” Audrey said defiantly, as she extended her glass to Vince. “I’ll have another, Vincent.”

  Vince nodded toward Bert’s drink in his hand. “How about it, Bert? The lady wants to celebrate. It’s her life.”

  Bert set his drink down on the table in front of him. “That’s right. It is. And we each only get the one. I think I should be going. Good night.” He stood and headed for the front door. Violet jumped up to open it for him.

  “Come back, Bert! Don’t be a fuddy-duddy!” Audrey called after him.

  But Bert didn’t turn back or answer her. He stepped outside and Violet followed him, shutting the door behind her.

  Vince rose and reached for his sport coat and hat.

  Audrey stared up at him. “You’re leaving now, too? Doesn’t anybody know how to have a good time anymore?”

  Vince leaned over her and kissed her forehead. “Even good times must come to an end at some point, Audie. So that there can be more on another day.” He stroked her cheek.

  Audrey didn’t want to dwell on such philosophical thoughts. “Hand me Bert’s drink.”

  As Violet came back inside, Vince obeyed.

  “It was very nice to meet you,” he said a moment later, as he walked toward Violet. “Take care of her, will you? It’s been a rough day,” he said in low tones, but Audrey caught every word. He tipped his hat to them both as he let himself out.

  Violet turned to her when the front door closed. Audrey took a long swig of Bert’s drink.

  “How about if I help you get into bed?” Violet said as she took a step toward Audrey.

  Audrey looked at Violet over the rim of the drink. “I can take artifice from just about anybody, but not from Bert and not you.”

  “What . . . what do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.” She closed her eyes and folded one arm lazily over her head, and with her other hand rested the tumbler on her bosom. “Don’t treat me like a child, Violet.”

  When Violet said nothing, Audrey opened her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, Violet. Sit down and enjoy your drink.”

  Violet made her way to the armchair where Bert had been and sat down. She picked up her glass.

  “Just please don’t patronize me, Violet. Please?”

  “I wasn’t trying to. I was just—”

  “Try the drink. Vince makes a devilishly tangy Sidecar.”

  Violet lifted the glass to her mouth and sampled the concoction inside. She startled at its invigorating effect.

  “Do you ever feel like you are living someone else’s life?” Audrey set the tumbler down on the coffee table and reached for her cigarettes and lighter. Droplets of lime juice had spattered the cigarette box. She lowered her arm from above her head and wiped the liquid away with a finger.

  “Sometimes.”

  Audrey nodded as she lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and stared up at the ceiling. “If you could be living any kind of life but the one you’ve been handed, what would it be?”

  Violet hesitated a second. “I don’t know.”

  Audrey lowered her gaze to look at Violet. “Sure you do. What is it you want from life, Violet? What have you always wanted?”

  Another pause from her roommate. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve always wanted. I can’t have it.”

  Audrey sat up on the couch on her elbows. “Why? Why can’t you have it?”

  Violet took another drink and lowered the glass to the table as she swallowed. “Because what I’ve always wanted is to be a mother. Even when I was little, I didn’t want to be a teacher or a nurse or a stupid secretary. I wanted to be a wife and mother and have a sweet little house with a white fence and rosebushes and toys in the yard. I wanted to feel a baby growing inside me and then push him or her out into the big world, and then take that child to my breast and sing lullabies. And I wanted to soothe away fevers and fears, kiss away the hurts and doubts, and be that child’s very universe. That’s what I was raised to be. That’s what I wanted to be.”

  Audrey stared at Violet, her mouth slightly open. “And?”

  Violet shrugged. “Something was wrong inside me and I had to have surgery. And now I can’t have children.”

  “That’s terrible,” Audrey whispered.

  “Yes, it is,” Violet murmured, and she flicked away a spilled tear.

  “Is that why that man named Franklin broke things off with you?”

  Violet nodded.

  “Lousy scoundrel.”

  Violet said nothing.

  “I just don’t get it.” Audrey reached for Bert’s drink again. “I really don’t. You, who would make a great mother, can’t get pregnant, and I, who would make a terrible mother, wouldn’t have a
ny trouble with that at all.”

  Violet blinked a second set of tears.

  “That just makes no sense,” Audrey continued, thoroughly perplexed by the arbitrary unfairness of life. “Why would it be so awful if you got what you wanted and I got what I wanted? You want to be a mother; I want to be a movie star. It’s not like we’re asking for wings to fly or immortality or to play hopscotch on the moon. Lots of people are mothers. Lots of people are movie stars. I just don’t get it.”

  Violet sighed heavily. “I don’t, either.”

  Silence hung between for them for a moment. “I’ve been pregnant twice.” The confession fell from her lips as though it had bubbled out from the deep with a force of its own.

  Violet slowly looked up from her glass. “What?”

  “You already know about the first time,” Audrey said as the buried year that still felt like it had been someone else’s life continued to froth out of her. “After the movie was canceled, Mr. Stiles tried to get me other auditions and screen tests. He did get a few, but no one wanted me, Violet. No one. It was such a . . . such a dark time for me. And then when I got pregnant again I . . .” Audrey’s voice fell away.

  “You what?” Violet said, her fingers white around the tumbler in her hand.

  Audrey pushed away the fragmented images of the parties, the alcohol, the old desire to just disappear the way her mother had. “The father wasn’t anyone I truly cared about, and he definitely didn’t care about me. I never saw that baby. I . . . They wouldn’t let me. I don’t even know who adopted it.”

  “They?” Violet’s voice sounded splintered.

  “I spent a year away,” Audrey said, the multiple cocktails making it easier to speak of the twelve months she did not often mentally revisit.

  “Who didn’t let you see your baby?” Violet sounded insistent.

  “The doctors and nurses at the sanitorium.”

  Violet stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “After I lost the movie, no one would hire me for any kind of movie. It was very disheartening and I . . . Well, after a while I didn’t care what happened to me,” Audrey said. “I went to parties and drank too much and woke up in strange beds, and I didn’t care. I fell into such a terrible state of sadness that Aunt Jo convinced me to voluntarily have myself committed so that I could get well. I was pregnant then and didn’t even know it yet. I had that baby at the hospital and I never saw it. When I was ready to be released, it was the one time Aunt Jo said maybe I should go home. But I didn’t want to go back home to my father, as a failure. That’s the way I had felt when I left.” As these words tumbled from Audrey’s mouth, she remembered the look in her father’s face the only time he came to visit her at the sanitorium. He had barely been able to speak to her. She closed her eyes tight to squash that memory and flatten it back into place.

  “And they wouldn’t let you keep your baby?”

  Audrey heard Violet’s question but it floated away the second Violet asked it, as if that query belonged to a completely different conversation. “You know, Violet,” Audrey continued sleepily, “sometimes I just want to say to hell with all of it. I just want to say to hell with the movie business. There’s no one in heaven watching over me. Sometimes I just want to fall in love with a good man like Bert and live an anonymous, ordinary life with that little house you talked about with the toys in the yard. Sometimes that seems like the sweetest dream of all. Can you see me living that life, Violet?”

  But Violet didn’t answer. And Audrey opened her eyes to see if Violet was still in the room with her.

  “Don’t give up on your dream, Audrey,” Violet finally said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Don’t give up now, after you’ve come so far. Of course your mother is still watching over you. Show the world you are the star it has been waiting for. She would want you to. She would want you to live the full life she didn’t get to live.”

  “I am so tired of it,” Audrey said as she stared at the remnants of Bert’s drink in her hand.

  Violet said nothing, and Audrey raised her head to look at her roommate. “Did you hear me, Violet? I’m tired.”

  Violet cleared her throat. “Tired people don’t give up, Audrey. Tired people just take a rest. Rest a bit and try again. You don’t want to live with regret.”

  She laughed. “Take a rest. Take a rest from what? I’m not doing anything.”

  “Take a rest from chasing it. You just need to rest a bit if you’re tired. Don’t give up now. I know you can make it as a movie star.”

  “How? How do you know it?”

  “Because you have everything all those other famous movie stars have and then some. You’re smarter and prettier. And you’ve wanted it more than they ever did, so you will work harder and shine that much brighter.”

  “You really think so?

  “I know so.”

  A slow smile stretched across Audrey’s tired face that felt like it began somewhere deep. “You’d make a wonderful mother, Violet. You really would.”

  Violet’s eyes instantly shimmered, and Audrey saw that as much as she wanted stardom, Violet wanted motherhood. Violet was caring for her the way a mother would, the way her mother would have. Should have. Audrey suddenly remembered a snippet of a long-ago conversation at the sanitorium between her and Aunt Jo, long forgotten, never pondered. Aunt Jo had said Audrey’s mother had wasted away because she’d chosen to feed only her sadness. Audrey hadn’t understood until that moment what Aunt Jo had meant: Unhappiness has an insatiable appetite. It does not care what it might have to kill to feed its cravings.

  Audrey reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out the brown bottle she had placed there earlier that evening. It made a rattling noise as she extended the bottle toward Violet. “Do something with these.”

  “What are they?”

  They had been a ticket. A ticket to her disappearing act. “Sleeping pills,” she said. “I was going to take them tonight. All of them.”

  “What are you saying?” Violet whispered.

  Audrey shook the bottle so that Violet would take it from her. “I am saying I want you to take these and get rid of them. Please, Violet. I want them gone. Please? Take them.”

  Violet uncurled her fingers from the glass she held and set it down on the table.

  “Thank you,” Audrey whispered, as the bottle was transferred from one woman’s hand to the other.

  “You’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had, Vi.” Audrey locked her gaze on Violet’s for a moment, then closed her eyes and laid her head back against the sofa pillow. When sleep overcame her, Violet was still sitting in the chair with the bottle in her hand.

  NINETEEN

  September 1939

  Violet’s waking thought on the morning of the tenth of September was the kiss Bert had given her the night before. A smile broke across her lips and she giggled. She felt a little like Scarlett on the morning after an inebriated Rhett carries her up the stairs in a rage fueled more by hurt than alcohol. And in the morning, Scarlett had been giddy with the thought of Rhett having needed her so.

  Hours earlier, Bert had taken her in his arms as they said good night on the porch. “Want to go with me to Santa Barbara tomorrow?” he’d whispered into her hair. “I’d like you to meet my mother and sisters. I want them to meet you.”

  Her heart had felt primed to burst. “Of course!” she’d murmured. Yes, yes, yes!

  The kiss had been the perfect ending to a perfect evening, which had begun with them going incognito to a theater in Riverside an hour away for a secret screening of Gone With the Wind. Stealing away for it had been deliciously deceptive and pleasurable.

  Violet had learned via a collection of memos she had typed that the movie was going to be shown at a theater full of unsuspecting patrons who thought they were going to be seeing Beau Geste. Selznick wanted a test audience for the film, even though
the premiere was many weeks away yet. Violet had whispered the news to Bert at lunch and suggested they take his truck and sneak over to Riverside to be a part of the test audience, fairly certain he would think she was joking, but Bert had surprised her by agreeing they should do it. It was almost as if, like Audrey, he was shaking off an old life. They hadn’t told anyone what they were doing, and they’d timed their arrival at the Fox Theater to just mere minutes remained before the newsreel was to start, so that they could slip in without any studio people, including Selznick himself, recognizing them. They sat in the back row in the farthest corner so they could stick to the shadows and be the first to leave when the screening was over.

  The moment the announcement was made that instead of Beau Geste the seated audience was going to see a three-and-a-half-hour, soon-to-be-released film, the air inside the room became electric. The audience was told there would be only one intermission. No one would be allowed to use the telephone. No one would be allowed to leave the theater once it started. And if someone did leave, they would not be allowed to come back inside. Policemen had been stationed at the doors. When the lights dimmed and the Gone With the Wind title began moving across the screen, the crowd roared with delight, and when they saw Clark Gable in his first scene, they cheered for five whole minutes. Nobody left early, even though the movie wasn’t over until just before midnight.

  Afterward, Violet and Bert were given reaction questionnaires that they were supposed to take home and send back to the studio. They had ducked out before anyone could recognize them and gone out for drinks when they got back to Hollywood, and walked Sunset, listening for the nightingale and talking about the movie.

  It had been an exciting evening, and the kiss as Bert said good night had been magical. Bert was fully hers now. Perhaps this should be the morning to tell Audrey that she and Bert were seeing each other.

  Bert hadn’t asked about Audrey in recent days other than in polite terms. Violet liked to imagine he had been wondering what he had seen in Audrey as a love interest all those years. Violet wanted to believe he had finally realized Audrey wasn’t someone to fall in love with, but rather someone to appreciate from a distance.